BS: Obit: America

Subject: Obit: America
From: Peter T.
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 04:40 PM

OBITUARY: America. b. July 4, 1776; d. Sept 20, 2002.

And so it begins... Imperial America. In spite of the America naysayers and conspiracy theorists over the years, I for one have always held to the belief that the Republican (!) virtues of America were stronger than the deluded dreams of empire, the sordid record of interference in other countries, etc. Now, thanks to the big money men, the dinosaurs, and the twisted logic of terror that played into their hands, those republican days are past, they died yesterday with the arrival, unashamed, of the Bush Doctrine. But before it passes from memory, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires us to speak of the dream of that republic, that frame of mind that could be felt, with all its flaws, on a January morning walking the hill at Monticello, or speaking of the American Revolution with friends on a Boston Common, or in the free movement of minds and bodies and ideas and art that one always looked to America to find. The founders of the Republic knew, for they had read their Livy and their Tacitus, that one begins by protecting one's freedoms by extending one's reach over others, and then one must, inevitably, as the iron of empire reaches into the political bloodstream, end by extending one's reach over one's own, over one's self. And now they too are brushed aside. I had always argued against it, that somehow America would not go down that road, that it couldn't happen here, in our time, not to such wonderful people. And yet it has.

So, now we enter the era of the Caesars, which will be followed inexorably by the reign of the Madmen, and then the final bitter descent into ruin. I am sorry to have been a witness to this, and it saddens me. My own country will be swallowed up before the madness subsides, and much else that is good and true will be swallowed up as well; but, again, it is worth paying tribute to what has been lost before the darkness descends completely.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: smallpiper
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 04:48 PM

Your a bit slow, we've know that since the end of WWII!

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: John Hardly
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 04:54 PM

Naw.

We're one president (two years) away from rescinding any current action....

...and we're less than ten years away from a new constitutional convention that will indeed be our demise (suicide?) but not because we become imperial.

We will rot before we'll conquer

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 05:07 PM

I'm with you, Peter T, except would argue on the date of its death, which I would place the day that Senior Bush's Supreme Court called off Democracy. That was the beginning of the end. As for the demise, you ain't seen nothing yet. Yeah, it was probably smart to organized a Department of Homeland Security because we are certainly doing everything in our power to insure future terrorists act inside the US. And with a price tag of $200B for a war against Iraq, the money is gonna come from the general fund and when the Baby Boomers get to retiremnt age and find the cupboard bare, there will be a massave social decline with old folks getting shot up trying to hold up banks. And Boomers will be dieing in cardboard boxes on steam grates. And, well, it's gonna be a heck of a mess for which the greedy folks will have no answers except hiring security forces to maintain their survival while the peasants hurl rocks over their chain link fences. Yeah, real pretty sight. But not *htat* far fetched...

So for you folks that want to go out and build the great Amercian Empire, count me out, thank you. And don't ask me not to tell you that I told you so and don't pretend down the road when Junior's plan only brings more misery, that you had nothing to do with it. We have too many folks allready saying they never supported the Vietnam War. Bull. We'll know who you were.

Bobert

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 05:24 PM

Damn. Nobody could call you guys cock-eyed optimists, could they?

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 05:32 PM

Well, thespians, you sound the gong of mellerdrammer beautifully, enough to send the audience home in tears.

But let us not roll over quite too soon. Peter T, the difference between America and Rome is that we have a documented intial vision, and a Constitution which sooner or later will not support any more hackery.

You will recall why Yamamoto had to be forced into war with the United States -- he feared his hot headed colleagues wouold awaken a sleeping giant. And slowly but surely, they did. We wake up even more slowly when the enemy is within. But wake, sooner or later, we shall.

The only imperial influence I am interested in having on the world, if possible, is one of stabilizing the worst swings in order to maximize the possibility for some kind of growth and re-design of better ways in the future.

Bobert: The reason we have so many people syaing they never supported the Vietnam war is that most of them were born after it was over.

A

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Banjer
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 05:32 PM

Nah! Just cock-eyed.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 05:48 PM

"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad"

An appropriately Latin tag for the emerging Imperia Americanum, from Seneca. (Though it was also used by that impeccably American poet, Longfellow.)

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: wysiwyg
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:00 PM

Oh good. Sit there in your own country and kick us when we're down, THAT will rally the troops for SURE!

~S~

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Suffet
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:04 PM

The United States was imperialist from the beginning, even before the beginning. Anglo-American colonists objected to the Proclamation of 1763, prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachians, because they dreamed of an empire stretching to the Mississippi and beyond. They objected to the Quebec Act (allowing autonomous government for Franco-Canada) because they saw that empire stretching northward. After the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which negated the Proclamation of 1763 by recognizing U.S. sovereignty over land once reserved for the Indians, the history of the United States was one of empire building across the North American continent. Let any Indians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Bits, Canadians, Mexicans, or Russians get in the way, and they had to be dealt with -- through money, through diplomacy, or through force of arms. The methods varied, but the goal was always the same. Came the late 19th Century, and the expansion continued overseas -- Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa -- and we are all aware of how in the early part of the 20th Century the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson made the United States the policeman of Latin America. Shall I continue?

--- Steve

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:28 PM

For space age technology, for Stone Age finesse
For getting us all in one hell of a mess
With your God save America, God damn the rest
America
Nixon, Kissinger, bombs in Vietnam
America
That sly red-necked huckster they call Uncle Sam
America
For the sake of the thousands of children who died
Be it Generals, your Senators, your Presidents who lied
For their Mickey Mouse morals, Neanderthal pride
America
We stand against you

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:35 PM

The Romans had their period of imperial expansion under their Republic too. In time the effect was toi destroy the Republic, and turn it into a full-blooded Empire with Emperors and all.

History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but there's a feeling abroad, I think, that an analogous development is maybe under way now.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Peter T.
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:37 PM

I believe there is a profound difference between acting against your principles, and changing your principles.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:44 PM

WYSIWYG,

You say: Sit there in your own country and kick us when we're down, THAT will rally the troops for SURE!

I don't think I want to rally your troops. The world would be a lot safer if they were uterrly demorilised and in no mood for a fight.

Right now, with this new policy Bush, Rumsfeld and their hawks scare me a lot more than Saddam Hussain ever has

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: John Hardly
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:45 PM

we have no principles that haven't been hanging by a thread for 30 years.

Constitutionaly limited government has been passe' for at least that long.

John

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:49 PM

I sense you are right, PT -- the loss of principle for the sake of capital, eh? It explains the deterioration of vision, the dumbing of the populace, and the mindlessness of leaders.

An oriful shame. Your observation puts into coherent perspective a lot of things about which I have been hitherto content just to complain smartly, but I think you have given me pause and a better point of view from which to consider a better tactic. Obviously the principles that provided so much intertial velocity and survived so well so long need some attention -- maybe even some reconstructive surgery?

Thanks!


A

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 06:58 PM

Let's see. Your country, an impoverished land of immigrants, has just won a revolution against the foremost power on Earth, and that power holds a vast colony that borders you to the North. The world's second greatest power holds a vast territory on your Western border, and the third greatest power has a large colony and a chain of island holdings just off your southern border. These powers are ruled by absolute despots who see your democratic form of government as a threat to their own sovereignty. In such a situation, the desire to control your own destiny would be very powerful. Most bets would be against your very survival, much less your continued expansion. To call your puny enterprise an "empire" would be a form of derision.

This was the condition of the United States of America in 1781. Two hundred plus years later, our motives can and should be questioned, but the fact remains that this country is an experiment in democracy, and it is an experiment that is still fragile. As my friend Amos said, we have the same roadmap we started with. That doesn't mean wrong turns won't be made, as in Vietnam. It means, however, we have no good reason to feel lost.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: mack/misophist
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:08 PM

Bush is in cahoots with the same group of thieves that seized control of the Baptist Church when I was a boy. (Can you believe the Baptists were once somewhat liberal and strongly a-political?) These thieves primarily used "stealth" candidates, packed slates, some of the same scheduling tricks Lenin used against his opponents and a lot of outright lies. Bush and his minions follow in their path. The real threat to the constitution, however lies in the way Reagan and the Bushes have been able to pack the courts.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:13 PM

You all talk about the threat to your constitution.

Doesn't the threat to the rest of the world of what Bush is doing enter your minds?

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: John Hardly
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:22 PM

umm....

If the constitution were sufficiently limiting (not broke) "what Bush is doing" wouldn't have to enter our minds...

bold move, that anonymous postin'

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Gareth
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:25 PM

Don't knock the American People - Europe owes them a debt.

But I am no friend of Shrub's - perhaps this is time for George Bernard Shaw''s play "The Applecart" to come to reallity.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: CraigS
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:25 PM

Stefan Grossman, the Ragtime Cowboy Jew, once expressed the situation as THE US WILL GO TO WAR FOR TWO REASONS: FOR OIL,AND FOR PEACE. He was putting the motives in the order of priority, and he was not wrong! What has upset me for a long time is that Iraqis always smile, even when they are over a barrel for wrongdoing, and they can't utter the word Jew without prefixing the word filthy if they think you are a friend. Incedentally, I have met one Iraqi (a Kurd) who I thought was a person amenable to reasoned belief, and expressed ideas acceptable to both sides until he was 'got at' by some of Saddam's thought police, after which he would only express the party line in conversation - it is sad that Saddam's influence extends to Britain.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:27 PM

CraigS,

You appear to have missed the fact that the US tend to go to war for reasons of hate

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:32 PM

And getting embarrassing stories off the front page. (And that is an observation that is totally neutral as between your two main parties.)

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:35 PM

Doesn't the threat to the rest of the world of what Bush is doing enter your minds?

I think you need somebody more sympathetic than Saddam to garner the proper sympathy.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:36 PM

The Apple Cart? I seem to remember that ends with the UK merging with America. God forbid. That is absolutely the last thing America needs...

...Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set,

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Gareth
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:41 PM

Kevin,

The Apple Cart is basically the people of the USA getting PO'd with the shenanigens of thier own political system. realising that the rebellion of 1776 was a mistake and asking to be accepted back as a British Colony.

And in case there is any mistake, G B Shaw was not a supporter of Monarchy, Imperialism, or of Colonialism.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:43 PM

'know, Guest, using the cloak of anonymity to express snide, make-wrong sentiments as you are doing really makes me think of you in the wrong light. I am sure you're smart enough to come up with rational and insightful observations that others could agree with -- but not if they have no sense of personhood with wehich they are agreeing. It just feels worng, you see. Slimy, like...

A

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:46 PM

Agreed Lonesome EJ,

But the basic tenant of Bush's approach appears to be:

I'm right, if you don't like my foriegn policy then you can get fucked, I'm doing it anyway. My (the American) way of running the world is the right one, and I don't care what any one else might think

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 07:58 PM

I'm not a Bush fan, Guest. I would surmise that Bush's attitude is based on the justification of "righteous indignation" because of the 9/11 attack on our citizens. He is not a charismatic individual capable of appealing to the better natures of the United Nations, and his indignant stance comes off as arrogance instead. He isn't the ideal man to lead us at this critical and dangerous time. I do think that Saddam specifically, and third-world nuke proliferation in general, is a topic in drastic need of confrontation. Unfortunately, GWB is the type to not see the forest for the trees.

and Amos is right...pick a name. Any name.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 08:09 PM

As I said Gareth, a merger. And Shaw wasn't advocating it, he was being Shavian, which includes all kinds of irony.

The trouble is there actually are people around who would dearly love to see the United Kingdom become a great deal closer to the USA, as a way of detaching it from association with the rest of Europe, and the thought makes my blood freeze. If I was an American I'd probably be even more horrified at the idea.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: kendall
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 08:13 PM

Well kids, it's been a hell of a ride.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: smallpiper
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 08:30 PM

Oh Bugger, there goes the nabourhood!

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 08:45 PM

Well, there was a time, McGrath, when I would have said it wasn't such a bad trade, that we'd treat you better than your Royals tried to treat us, and you'd have all this great armamentum the next time the island got bombed, and so forth. But just now, to tell the truth, I kinda sympathize.

:>)

A

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Sorcha
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 08:55 PM

OK, so, what do we (as Americans) actually DO? Who should we vote for? The lesser of the evils.....?? Calling/writing our Congressmen doesn't seem to do much good, neither does writing letters to small town newspapers, etc. Take up arms and march against who/whatever?

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: smallpiper
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 09:00 PM

A call to arms will only get you arrested and labelled as a terrorist. Use your votes and get people to use theirs. And by the way you should note that things were done in the name of the King - he didnt tell us what to do Parliament did that - you know the mother of all democracies!

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Sorcha
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 09:03 PM

"Now is the time for all good countrymen........"
(Thomas Paine)

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 09:05 PM

I think George W. gained undeserved credibility after the destruction of the World Trade Towers. With his recent posturing, he seems to lose more credibility every day, both in the U.S. and abroad. There's a difference - intelligent Americans see him as an idiot, and Europeans and others see him as a demon.

George W. Bush does not represent me, and I've been an American all my life. Personally, I think the President of the United States is an asshole - but I don't think he has enough backing to take the world into war.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Midchuck
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 09:17 PM

The whole problem traces back to the fact that the American people, for the vastly greater part, will vote for the person they've seen on TV the most. And the politicians know it. So they seek to keep the people with the most money happy. The others will fall into place once the TV hucksters explain to them what they're supposed to to.

So how do you get the mass of voters to take a real look at the candidates, demand that they state their positions on the issues in unequivocal and understandable terms, and stick to them, once elected?

Yeah, I donno either.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 09:46 PM

"...the American people, for the vastly greater part, will vote for the person they've seen on TV the most. "

So who would that be? On our screens the American who turns up most frequently is probably Homer Simpson. Mind, given a choice...

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: John Hardly
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 09:57 PM

y'know this is an awful lot of wrath for Bush who is not acting counter to any way he ever characterized himself before or after he ran for office. He didn't get there and change his mind.

Anger should be directed at the dishonorable el-foldo democrats who claimed to have a principle....

...and then abandoned it after a few opinion polls.

We knew they lied to us through the Clinton years but it was OK then because the charges against the president were over something we didn't think important. We assumed when it was something important, they would suddenly become men of honor.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: JenEllen
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 10:21 PM

As my Armenian grandmother used to say: Give me a fucking break. What do you expect? An entire nation of individuals to go belly-up just because of ONE Bush? A better alternative would be to spend a little less time with the woe-is-us and more time in the defense of what is true and real. The values of 1776 you are elevating were those of white, male landowners. (Steve covered the rest of political history) It suited the time, and gave a good foundation of mistakes to deal with later. I don't see this period of time as any different--we can evolve as citizens and humans, PROVIDED one gets off their ass and DOES something about it. Do I agree with George Bush? Hell no, the man is vile to his very core. Do I believe that one man can ruin a nation? No again, only a nation can ruin itself and one man can't command an army that won't fight. However, the very ideals that you espouse in your daily life can lead to nothing but the current situation. Yes there is a difference between acting against your principles and changing your principles, but why should that be the only choice? What about sticking TO your principles?

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 10:23 PM

smallpiper, there are, and will be many more & bigger, protests & demonstrations & arguments etc. against this war. There will be a significant minority bloc of votes in Congress against Bush's Gulf of Tonkin II Resolution. This kind of (metaphorical) "call to arms" will *not* get us arrested as terrorists. A *literal* call to revolutionary arms, *will*; but that's precisely the complaint of our domestic Second-Amendment rightwing gun freaks, with whom I presume you would not care to make common cause & I know I wouldn't.

My own conscientious objection is to the doctrine of pre-emptive war. I do not want my country to strike first, against enemies who have not yet attacked us. al Qaeda *has* attacked us; and not just last year either. Saddam has not. Nor has he supplied al Qaeda & its satellites; he hates them & the feeling is mutual. He's afraid that if he gave them his stuff they might fire it right back at him without batting an eye; and he's right.

But I recognize, & you guys might wanna consider, that times have sadly changed & that waiting for Bad Guys like Saddam to fire the first shot can obligate us to accept consequences considerably worse than, say, Pearl Harbor, or the WTC, or the London Blitz for that matter. I'm still against pre-emption. It's un-American. (Sorry for the P.-inC. terminology; and No, I didn't say unprecedented in American history. Still un-American.)

But by Golly, having taken that stand, when I'm croaking from the aerosolized Anthrax down the street, or waiting a few seconds for the blast effect to kick in, I'd better not bitch about how my gummint didn't act preemptively to prevent it. I *will* of course; but I'd *better* not. I can't have it both ways; and neither can you.

The US, in concert with the UK, deterred an attack by the Soviet Union---which had no more moral scruples against a first strike than Saddam does---for 50 years by means of the convoluted & I suppose morally-unscrupulous doctrine of massive retaliation. It was awful, but it worked.

Anybody remember JFK's Cuba speech in October 1962? So, how's this uppdate, gentlemen & ladies:

It shall be the policy of this government to regard any use of any weapon of mass destruction against any people anywhere, by Iraq, or by any nation or entity proven supplied with such weapon or its components by Iraq, as an attack by Iraq upon the United States of America, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iraq.

There you go. He can *have* 'em, but not *use* 'em. Not even against the Kurds & Wheys. / Any of mah fellah Amurricans remmeber this old TV sheriff-show theme song?

"Texas John Slaughter made 'em do what they oughter
'Cause if they didn't, they died."

Want that? Return to the doctrine of "MAD"? / I don't --- but it appears to be either that, or the Bush plan; or, do nothing & trust that the eminent Col. Scott Ritter was lying, just for fun, the first time around, but isn't now.

In conclusion: yes, my argument does presuppose that we Americans are *not*, in fact, the Pre-eminent Bad Guys, responsible for all the ills of the world; and accordingly, brave Guest, that it is not primarily the *US* that "goes to war for reasons of hate". You can disagree with that if you like. You've a God-given right to be wrong.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 10:34 PM

PS Having thus Outed himself on the Wrong Thread, Pooka ducks & covers & pops down the rabbithole. (Woops! There's a Fox down here.)

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 10:47 PM

I, for one, am in favor of an American Empire.

We have gathered together, on one continent, a contingent of ALL the world's peoples.

The divine destiny that created the world's greatest civilization is NOW READY to march forth and spread the simple formulae for liberty, prosperity, health, and happiness......DEMOCRACY and FREE ENTERPRISE.

Sincerely a Believer in the American Experiment,
Gargoyle

The "CUP" is fuller now ... than it has ever been in the history of mankind.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 21 Sep 02 - 11:32 PM

(Pops back up momentarily) - Gargoyle, thou effective-deterrent-of-evil-spirits, I greatly admire your forthrightness, credit your unsatirical sincerity, & respect your point of view. For many years I shared it, essentially (which perhaps accounts for these odd residual feelings of sympathy for my own country -- & not merely for 'what it might become', but for what it IS). / The rub is, there's a philosophical/intellectual problem with us adherents of liberty & democracy & free enterprise imperially imposing our freedom-loving beliefs, however fine (as indeed they are), upon others. It's a Condundrum y'see. (I used to live in a nice Condundrum btw; but I digress.)

Then too, there's a practical question of realpolitik. Theoretically, we're for Democracy throughout the world, and in particular the Islamic world. However, in a free-and-fair election -- their first & last, of course --- I do believe the Muslim voters would elect Osama bin L. in a landslide. Even as the Germans freely elected Hitler, & with no assistance from Florida election officials btw. / What political-dietary advice do we give to the proverbial snake which insists upon eating its own tail?

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 12:12 AM

No rant here. Send your bucks to Congressman Paul from Texas tomorrow. Someone help me with a blue clicky thing. Since Congresswoman McKinney has been assasinated by the other side there areaer very few voices of reason left. Paul is one.

Bobert

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 12:43 AM

Bobert, did you mean Paul Wellstone of Minnesota? The only Senators listed for Texas are Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 12:49 AM

Having seen numerous alternatives, Garg, I can hardly believe you're serious. The cup (of excess and folly) is indeed fuller today than it has ever been before in recorded history. It's pitiable. It's tragic. It's almost unbelievable...unless you've grown accustomed to it through daily exposure...which most middle class Americans have.

But how is a drug addict supposed to be objective about the very drugs that control him on a daily basis? Not easy. The only way, in most cases, is cold turkey...and for that you would have to leave behind (for some extended period of time) your consumer lifestyle, your computers, your TV's, your money, and your delusions of living in "the greatest society on Earth"...which you most certainly ARE NOT!!!

The greatest society (theoretically) is one in which all people have a place at the table (of normal material needs and requirements) and everyone is your beloved and trusted friend and neighbour...and things are done, not because they make anyone a monetary profit, but because the very doing of them accomplishes something necessary or something beautiful or both...and for no other reason than for the sake of doing it. Not for money. Not for fame. Not for control of people or resources. But for its own sake. That would be a society worthy of being called "greatest".

What you have now, in comparison to that, is a society of deluded paranoid apes, and I'm afraid many of them are incapable of even understanding that such an alternative society is possible, because they've been poisoned so long that they wouldn't know real food if it was right there in front of them.

I'm speaking allegorically, of course, when I say "food".

I'm in favour of no Empire whatsoever, just equality and brotherhood (to use an old-fashioned word). Given equality, there can be no empire, nor should there be. Empires are built upon the backs of a suffering humanity by a privileged few.

- LH

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 01:05 AM

LH, I know you meant it as an ideal, but The greatest society (theoretically) is one in which all people have a place at the table (of normal material needs and requirements) and everyone is your beloved and trusted friend and neighbour...and things are done, not because they make anyone a monetary profit, but because the very doing of them accomplishes something necessary or something beautiful or both...and for no other reason than for the sake of doing it. Not for money. Not for fame. Not for control of people or resources. But for its own sake. That would be a society worthy of being called "greatest". is against human nature, at this point in the collective consciousness. IF and WHEN we ever do reach that point, there will no longer be a need to exist in material form.

If one believes in the difference planes of existence, then we know that we will never reach that same point, at the same moment as every otehr single being, so....oh well, sorry, what a drag...

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 01:08 AM

Little Hawk,

Thank you for lumping me as a conglomerated coagulget upon the cardio system of America.

But, there is something "missing in my brain" and I am seriously "retard" in the fields of film, t.v., and radio and cannot understand their medium.

Live performance is OK, I can see who is talking to whom....there are not these strange jumps and directions that film presents.

You, my little hawk child, appear to be the subject of defeatest fifth column propaganda.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Art Thieme
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 01:28 AM

I am quite glad that nobody here has any real power to bring about what they would. To do so would discommode those not agreeing to the enth degree---along with Bush and/or Sadam and/or anyone else using their power to crush the others in the name of whatever.

What will be will be-----and the dogs of war or the doves of peace will wend their way through the valleys of the shadows of death always hovering and threatening to pounce.

May you live in interesting times.

A curse, they say. And the pundits that survive will have so very much to write about afterwards---or here at Mudcat.

I wish you all peace---in spite of ourselves and all of our heartfelt good intentions.

But you do make me sad when I hear your dedications and your vehimence, your certainty and your willingness to die for the vaguest of ideals.

I stood at Gettysburg a few differnt times and wondered throughout why so many walked headlong into that kill or be killed landscape. And I saw that it was easier to move ahead than to turn around and buck the superiors and the system. And the bumper-sticker slogan rang in my ears:

What if they gave a war and nobody came!!!

Now, that would be exceptional valor above and way beyond any damned call of duty !

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: smallpiper
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 05:09 AM

An indication of the US tendancy towards imperialism is quiet clearly made in the assumption that the US way is the right and only way to live! I agree with Little Hawk but would add that to live and let live is the greatest way to be. Who made you (the US) the police/judge/jury/executioner?

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 07:47 AM

The Germans freely elected Hitler, & with no assistance from Florida election officials The Germans electoral and political system brought Hitler to power, but in fact most Germans never voted for him - in fact more of them voted against him. They went along with him once he'd come to power, from a mixture of cowardice and "patriotism", and a desire for a quiet life, and very likely in many cases a taste for associating themselves with glory and success.

Most people are like that in most places. It was like that with Margaret Thatcher, it's like that with Bush. (And nobody go accusing me of saying Thatcher and Bush are just like Hitler; what I'm saying is that the Germans of that time weren't very different from the British or the Americans.)

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 10:09 AM

SURVIVORS by John Stewart

He broke his back To put the food on the table In Columbus Ohio he said to his wife "I believe that the flag It was more than a rag But the outlaws in office Have shattered my life"

Can you hear me Ohio? You are the country You are the nation You will survive Can you hear me Ohio? You are the country You are the nation You will survive

Children in Cheyenne Are taught in their schools Believe in the country Don't break any rules But the T.V. is on and they Know something's wrong Someone must tell them To keep pushing on

Can you hear me Wyoming? You are the country You are the nation You will survive Can you hear me Wyoming? You are the country You are the nation You will survive

Devils and angels Belong in the church You try for the best And you deal with the worst Just keep on plugging You old nine to five For you are the heartbeat That keeps us alive

Can you hear me Virginia? You are the country You are the nation You will survive

Can you hear me Dakota? Can you hear me Colorado? Can you hear me California? Can you hear me Wisconsin? Can you hear me Arizona? Can you hear me in Georgia? Can you hear me in Texas? Can you hear me Hawaii? Can you hear me Alaska?

You are the country You are the nation You will survive

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 10:16 AM

Kat: He's a congressman, sorry. I heard a piece of his remarks yesterday on the radio and this gut was giving the administartion a not so subtle "what for" and warning his fellow congressmen that they were getting ready to get involved in some real supid stuff. But he is from Texas. See if you can find him for me and dop a blue clicky thing. Thanks.

Bobert

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: MBSLynne
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 10:22 AM

Well I've read this with interest, but it's far too political for me (and consequently a little too agressive for a pacifist hippy) However, a while back someone said "We (the Europeans) owe America a debt of gratitude." I'm just very curious to know what for?

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 10:22 AM

This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie

Chorus: This land is your land, this land is my land From California, to the New York Island From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway I saw above me an endless skyway I saw below me a golden valley This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts And all around me a voice was sounding This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling The fog was lifting a voice come chanting This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tress passin' But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin! Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office - I see my people And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' If this land's still made for you and me.

Chorus (2x)

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 10:23 AM

Kevin McG - as has been noted on election-related threads, neither the US, nor the UK-type-parliamentary, electoral system requires that the governing party be one that obtained, on its own, *majority* national popular-vote support. Indeed, not *even* a national popular *plurality* (first-place finish) is required by either system; but that's beside the point here. Which is: in Germany, by popular vote, the National Socialist party won the largest bloc in the parliament. I.e., they won. Sure, most Germans never voted for Hitler. Merely, more of them voted for the Nazis than for anybody else. Of course after that they didn't have another election for quite some time, did they? Which is what happens when democracy elects its own mortal enemy.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 10:26 AM

Go to the Digital Tradition, click on "This Land Is Your Land" and you get "The Power and the Glory," a Phil Ochs song.

Have the curators of the DT never heard of the most sung of all American folksongs?

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 10:46 AM

Re Congress: the moderate Democrat from my district, John Larson, D-CT, is opposed to a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. So are a number of very conservative Republican Congressmen. It's not just the few far-lefties in Congress that don't go along.

All things being relative, I guess I'm one of the few far-righties on this thread, since my own opposition to the pre-emptive war doctrine is based precisely upon my belief that the USA *is* a *good* country. I.e., in some 'Catcircles, I'm right (i.e. correct) for the wrong reasons. Oh well. For the record: I say the USA is (not "could become"; *IS*) the best country in all the world. (Yes, yes, that puts Ireland second. Sorry:)

Fair warning: presently I'm gonna post a very good newspaper piece about the dangers of the Bush doctrine. Y'all may not like my naive patriotism; but I think some of you (at least) will like the article.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:00 AM

So Pooka? The point I was making is that just because whatever electoral system there may be throws some creep into office it doesn't mean that most people like them, whether that's in England or America or Germany. And it doesn't mean we should feel smug and superior because where we live things haven't turned out as badly as they could have.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:02 AM

And now, as is my wont from time to time (hey, waddaya wont?), here is an Op-Ed from my excellent hometown paper, the Hartford Courant, "America's Oldest Continuously Published Newspaper". It is by an eminent Yale law per-fesser; and much more importantly, I agree with it. (Well. Mostly.)

The Most Dangerous Person On Earth
It's Not Who Bush Would Like You To Think It Is

By JACK M. BALKIN

September 22 2002

[Jack M. Balkin is Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. His latest book is "The Laws of Change" (Schocken Books, 2002).]

When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, his basic strategy was to stake out a position and refuse to budge, hoping to bully others into acquiescing. Only when met with strong opposition did he back down and compromise. We are seeing the same strategy in his policy over Iraq. In the past weeks, the president has attempted to bully the United Nations and now Congress into allowing him to attack Iraq and depose its leader. He is likely to get his wish. But the larger problem is not what will happen if no one stands up to Saddam Hussein. It is what will happen if no one stands up to the president and his vision of moral clarity.

Our Constitution left the power to declare war to Congress because of the fear that if the president could act unilaterally, he might seek to aggrandize himself by taking the country into one war after another. Although the president could always defend the nation if attacked, he could not initiate hostilities without Congress' approval. In the 20th century, Congress' role has receded of necessity, so the president's power to make war has been hemmed in largely by domestic politics, the threat of nuclear reprisal and international law.

The Bush administration's new policy of pre-emptive attacks is a dangerous addition to this mixture, creating a host of bad incentives. Simply by announcing future threats that deserve pre-emptive action, presidents can seize control of the political stage. A president who takes the country to war pushes aside all other concerns. By shifting the nation's forces from one military offensive to another, he can divert attention from domestic failures and foreign policy blunders. The more often the president attacks other countries pre-emptively, the more likely it becomes that our country will be attacked in turn. The president can then justify additional military action in response, and no patriotic American will oppose it.

In this way, the president can effectively govern through war, with disastrous consequences for the nation and for the world. Armed with the doctrine of military pre-emption, the perpetual political campaign perfected by our last president might well become the perpetual military campaign of future presidents.

President Bush had good reason to take us to war after Sept. 11. Still, he has not accomplished his stated goal of eliminating al Qaeda or capturing Osama bin Laden. With victory not achieved and Afghanistan still unstable, he has now attempted to shift our attention to a new war with Iraq. Again, he may well have excellent reasons for doing so. But we must pay attention to the larger picture. Members of Congress debating authorization for an attack on Iraq should ask the president tough questions about what future military actions he is considering. The way the president's foreign policy is proceeding, Iraq may not be the last war he asks us to fight.

The president is right about one thing, however. Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president.

Copyright 2002, Hartford Courant

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:04 AM

McGrath, re yer above rejoinder on electoral results: OK, yes. Agreed, entirely. Churchill (??): democracy is a very bad system of government; but all the others are so much worse.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Peter T.
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:10 AM

Thanks for the comments. The only serious argument in favour of the Bush Doctrine proferred above is the shift in the conditions required to support the stance of not acting first, but retaliating when provoked -- what does one do if the provocation is so severe (WTC, Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima), partly through technical innovation putting bigger weapons into the hands of smaller groups, that one feels one must strike first, pre-emptively; and that one is not dealing with governments (supposedly rational, or led by people whose personal survival is paramount), but terrorist groups? I don't believe this has anything to do with Iraq, the idea that Iraq threatens America is absurd -- as with all empires, it is the proliferation of "interests that must be guarded" that begins to expand the agenda uncontrollably. Rome found itself fighting (and losing to) Persia in the deserts for no reason stronger than that Rome's power must not be questioned or its worldwide interests would be threatened. Yet, concerning the shift towards pre-emption because of the increased costs of absorbing an initial attack from non-controllable terrorists, there are strong arguments on both sides: I personally feel that the risks of destroying very hardwon international law, and the basic trust in American goodwill, will, in the long run, outweigh the personal risks -- more people are threatened by the disintegration of the law of nations into pure raw power dynamics than by acts of terrorism. Indeed, one of the greatest outcomes of such a scenario is the destruction of the moral difference between terrorism and civilization, which plays into the hands of those who want everything reduced to force.

It is also worth pointing out that the American refusal to support serious efforts at nuclear non-proliferation (except its own enlightened programme in Russia, that the Bush administration tried to cut earlier this year), and international efforts at non-proliferation of all kinds of terrorist weapons (the American refusal to support the recent international treaty along these lines boggles the mind) undermines the pre-emptive case against terrorists -- not all preemption need be violent preemption -- in fact, it is ominous evidence that recent American governments have so disliked being part of the international community that they were prepared to put their own citizens at risk in support of the principle that "we will fight terrorists our own way and on our own terms, these terms now including pre-emptive violence over other national boundaries and through massive counter-proliferation".

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Greg F.
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:28 AM

Here's his website
Congressman Ron Paul
& I'd recommend reading EVERYTHING he has to say before jumping on his bandwagon...

Best, Greg

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:31 AM

These left-to-right spectrum categories are semantically null, as far as I am concerned. They don't hold enough genuine meaning to feed a gerbil on.

There is no argument that the principles on which the country is built were good, solid ones and perhaps the most enlightened ones ever brought together in a single government.

There is also no argument that the United States is among the richest of nations in terms of natural resources.   Ithas an infrastructure that is among the best of the world. It has been the source of much ingenuity, generosity toward others, and some world-class art. People struggle just to be here -- some die trying.

There is no question it is a good country. It is also an easy mark for facile sarcasm and criticism by those with no positive suggestions to make.

Now as to whether it is currently pursuing wise policies -- why that's another question.

But let's not be stupid and mix the whole thing into one giant ball of disappointed generalization, folks.

A

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: JenEllen
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:43 AM

Why not, Amos? Seems to be that vanity and self-absorption are the attributes of the day...why not have a little disappointed generalization on the side? *g*

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Gareth
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:49 AM

MBSLynne -

Four words on Gratitude Lend Lease, Marshall Aid.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 12:17 PM

You are what you are, and everyone else is what they are. Delving back into history, speculating whether things could have been better or might have been worse, is a waste of time, except insofar as it's a way of avoiding repeating mistakes, and perhaps getting some good ideas as to what might work. And the truth is, the history of every other nation on earth is just as likely to be relevant, either way.

Slave owners calling out passionately in defence of liberty for themselves, people engaged in the conquest of a continental empire involving the extirpation of the original inhabitants, while at the same time fiercely (and rightly) denouncing the appetite of the European Empires for subjugating the planet. The history of the USA not all of one piece any more than the history of any other country. There's stuff to repudiate as well as stuff to emulate.

I doubt if there are too many people under the age of 70 in England who see the British Empire as a matter of undiluted pride. There are some, and they aren't people I'd want to have much to do with. There's stuff to be pleased happened, and stuff to be sad about, and people will vary on how they think about how these balance out. (I tend towards seeing the balance as tipped against the Empire, but then I would.) Thai's if they ever think about such things at all, which most people don't too often, or too accurately.

I imagine most people in the States see things much the same way.

What builds up antagonism between peoples is maybe when we get the impression that the people in the other country actually believe the record is overwhelmingly positive. That's when the "facile sarcasm and criticism" gets trundled out, as a way of reminding the others that the record is normally pretty blotchy. And that can get into a tit-for-tat match. God knows there's always plenty of dirty laundry if you dig around a bit.

What matters though is, as Amos says, whether the things that are currently being done are wise and just and likely to produce good results.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: mg
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 12:39 PM

oh a glimmer of hope. The little corner of America that I live in is hanging on...not a bastion of prosperity, but there are berries in the bushes and clams on the beach and people get by. mg

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Chip2447
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 12:47 PM

America is Damned if we do, and Damned if we don't.
If we Isolate our selves behind the power that we possess then other countries will scream "FOUL" because we won't help, financially or militarily. If we do get involved the we piss off someone else.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the time has come to cease beating a dead horse, Bush won the election, right, wrong, fair and square or not. Now, it doesn't matter. We survived the Clinton years, WaterGate didn't destroy us, Vietnam failed to eliminate us, how far back do we have to go to find a President and Congress that didn't cause consternation among 1/2 of the population.

Americans, get over it, but dont be surprised if George W gets another term, we gave one to Clinton.

Western Europe, and Asia, get over it, we'll be here the next time one of your "MEMBERS" fuck up and decide that they want more than what they have.

Quit yer bitchin, especially about the past. Get out and change the future if you can.

Chip2447

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 12:51 PM

Peter T., Amos, McGrath: thanks, indeed. *All* very sound, sober, wise & eloquently-stated thoughts; with most of which I am constrained to agree. Peter T., especially, good points re the dangers of pre-emption even in fighting the pan-national terrorists. Kevin, of course we all have decidedly mixed histories, as you say. Actually I wish we didn't *have* nations, with which to play Who's the Best. But we're stuck with 'em: tribalism is in our genes. //Amos, I fear we are not pursuing wise policies, which is exactly the issue as you say, But we citizens *can* still unfluence that. (The Yale guy whose piece I posted above, stating Bush is the world's most dangerous man, is not being arrested as a terrorist, contrary to somebody's previous prediction.)

Oh and btw Amos: yer right about left & right --- nowait, I mean, yer left about right & left---ahhh y'know what null meaning I don't mean, being notoriously anti-semantic meself. I merely used the terms for the sake of inconvenience. Gimme the ultraviolet spectrum anny day. But where do you find these gerbils who feed on genuine meaning? Lord, they must be smart.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: JenEllen
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 01:06 PM

Well said, Kevin, well said.
~J

(And just where are these gerbils, Amos? The glitter go-go hamsters wanted to know--dates with brains and all--can't blame 'em)

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 01:31 PM

Hahahaha :) Glitter-go-go hamster seeks high-IQ gerbil. Age, religion, left-right spectra unimportant. Well-groomed fur a plus. No rats. / Leave it to us Mudders (aaah, ya Mudder) to lighten up the doomsday threads / y'all do know we're basically anarchists don'tcha....

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 02:03 PM

Garg - That's an unusual situation you've got there regarding film, TV, and so on...if I understand you correctly. I'd have to agree that there are a lot of films being made now that are extraordinarily disjointed, and I'm not surprised that you would have trouble following them. I certainly do. It's a style of film that seems to have developed out of music videos and video games generally("faster is better" "louder is better" "less time spent on any one thing is better"). These are evidences of a jaded pallet and a deteriorating attention span, and it's disquieting.

I don't know where you would get the idea that I'm defeatist, however. I don't imagine for a minute that a system as insane as the present prevailing one can win out in the end, and I know that my own spirit will survive it, as will the spirits of other people.

Therefore, I am not defeatist.

As for empires, may they all be defeated. I served a number of them in various past lives, killed and was killed, and I have no intention of making the same mistake again now.

In the very long run, Nature will win...and those humans who are inclined to cooperate with Her. That is not what I call defeat.

You see, a really intelligent civilization finds ways to serve both humanity and Nature (meaning animals, plants, earth, water, air, and all the rest of it). That is entirely possible to do, but it's highly improbable that it would be done right now, given the present state of mind of most people and their idea of what their lives are about (accumulating money and material possessions and indulging their momentary appetites).

There simply is no country out there espousing what I have just proposed, so who is the 5th column whose propaganda has infected me?

I'm looking at it from a perspective of considering fifty thousand years or more of human development on this planet, as a soul who has been here for ALL of it...and it may in fact be several million years, not fifty thousand.

This present societal situation is very temporary, and today's "winners" will soon be forgotten.

But a sensible society is not based on winners and losers, it's based on cooperation and reverence for what is sacred. And what is sacred? Absolutely everything.

Kat - You say: "IF and WHEN we ever do reach that point, there will no longer be a need to exist in material form."

Maybe so. But if an ideal is possible when beyond material form, then it is possible while in material form too. Instead of waiting to escape to heaven or nirvana or some such level of existence, why not instead bring heaven down into the material. Why not?

As to us reaching it at different times...well, yes, that is for sure. I speak about a thing as much to discover who I am as for any other reason, because speaking it helps me to know that. Self-expression is a way toward self-knowledge. I observe that others are doing that too, and it can be pretty interesting to see how they think and to at least try to figure out why they think that way.

- LH

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: JenEllen
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 02:06 PM

Ah, Pooka, ya know it. *g*
There comes a point where ya gotta just take responsibility for your own actions. So what if ol'Bushie says it's okay to kill folks, or cut down trees, or drill for oil in National Parks....doesn't mean I have to DO it. Conscience and rational thought and all...What do you have when all that is in play? Dating services for rodents, o'course.

SGGGH seeks SSG for endless love and candlelight dinners of genuine meaning. Must enjoy scrambling around in the dark, large litters, and slow cats.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 03:35 PM

LH said Instead of waiting to escape to heaven or nirvana or some such level of existence, why not instead bring heaven down into the material. Why not?

No waiting, just that when one is enlightened enough to reach that space of no need, desires, wants, etc. where one could live in peace, etc. as you'd stated earlier, they would, in some people's beliefs, have reached the point of ascension. Certainly they could choose to stay, but there would be no need for them to do so. I do believe there are those wise ones who walk among us and have decided to stick around, in service but it is not because they "need or desire to"...they just give to be giving.

Now, do a 360 and tell me, everyone who is in this thread and disagrees with what the shrub is doing, What Practical Things Do You Suggest We Do that might have an effect?! Let's balance the talk with some kinds of action, eh?

kat

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: JenEllen
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 04:08 PM

Kat, the practical things require patience, and not everyone is hip to that (or if they are, they ignore it). A buddy of mine is a child psychologist, and we had an interesting discussion once about the human desire for immediacy. Basically, no one wants to put off a desire in favour of a reward down the road. That simple shift in thinking EVERY DAY on small issues can make a great change in life. Don't buy food you don't know precisely where it came from, don't buy 'new' cars, find out what your representatives are doing in government and ride them like wet blankets...etc...we all know what we are capable of.

Lack of time is NOT an excuse, but it's one I hear tried frequently. Horseshit. Amazing amounts of time can be found if one just turns off the television (not to mention all the advertising stimuli that is avoided by doing so) and talks to real live people. This takes TIME, and is FRUSTRATING, but is ultimately rewarding. Example? It took me literally _months_ to get my Congresswoman to quit responding to my e-mail with paper mail form letters saying "we appreciate your input". After repeatedly telling her office I don't appreciate the waste of paper mail for a form letter, I finally began getting e-mail confirmation of my bitching and ranting to Congress. Small success, but success all the same.

The only other practical thing to do, after all of that, is to make sure that Glitter Hamsters get cool prom dates. (meaning: it is life after all, have some smiles, eh?)

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Jon Bartlett
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 04:36 PM

Peter T's opening threnody and Little Hawk's last post reminded me of the following:

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,/ And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,/

I sadly smiling remember that the flower rots to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth./ Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother./

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy: life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly/ A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine perishing republic./

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening centre; corruption/ Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains./

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master./ There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught - they say - God when he walked on earth.

(would some Joe Clone kindly set up the lines properly?)

This is Robinson Jeffers' "Shine, Perishing Republic", from I believe c. 1925 (I've only got a "selected" with no original dates). Its mournful and elegant tone strikes the right note for me. The pronouncement of the Bush doctrine can now be seen as the natural and inevitable outcome of the Permanent War Party (in both its wings, Republican and Democrat) and the industries that batten on it. The modern enlightenment (Roosevelt to Nixon), a window of some degree of concern and care for others, is now closed.

Ave atque vale!

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 04:48 PM

There are still some outside organisations trying to provide practical help to ordinary suffering people in Iraq. One such in Europe anyway is CAFOD (Catholic Fund for Overseas Development).

Here's what it has to say about what it's going to mean if there's a major attack on Iraq.

:

"The danger of unilateral action, in the form of a pre-emptive strike by the United States (possibly with the support of the UK) cannot be underestimated. It would be difficult to imagine a single, more effective way of wreaking further devastation on an already devastated country…..and creating a major humanitarian crisis with hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. A militaristic or purely security approach to the problem of international terrorism is unimaginative and doomed to failure.

Only if the world is prepared to tackle the root causes of conflict, liberation struggles, terrorism (including state terrorism) is there a chance of arriving at durable and sustained solutions."

But aside from the big issues, this is a channnel for providing a bit of help and comfort for people who haven't done anyone any harm.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Peter T.
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 05:12 PM

I forgot to add something about the strangely deluded nature of what is being proposed in the Bush Doctrine, I am not sure people fully grasp that, and that is what prompted my original note -- the kind of remarks that one makes, and the gods hear, ideas that have no basis in any historical or political reality, except the delusions of permanent empire. For example, I quote from George W. Bush's remarks to West Point in June: "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless." Napoleon was prone to making these kinds of remarks -- once we have defeated Britain (there is always one last enemy who for some mysterious reason refuses to see reason), there will be no more enemies, and universal peace under the French flag will break out.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: DougR
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 05:29 PM

I was feeling pretty good until I started reading the majority of these posts. The sky is falling, right? Wrong!

kat suggested instead of talking, those of you who are so dissatisfied with the situation do something about it. I've been expecting to see on TV about 5,000 Mudcatters showing up at all the hearings in Washington, D. C. protesting. Instead, when Rumsfield appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee three tired looking ladies (don't know if they were wearing tennis shoes or not) showed up to protest. Surely all of you dissatisfied folks can do better than that!

Conceivably, while the naysayers here represent the majority opinion on the Mudcat, perhaps that is not true of the general population. But then, what does the general population know, right? :>)

Things are going to be fine, and everybody will still be able to make music.

Bobert: when you going to lead your march on Washington? I keep watching Television but nobody is showing up!

DougR

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 05:52 PM

Bush is an incoherent illiterate, Peter. There are no military strengths beyond challenge and to dream of them is deluded; all true,

The race of the next decade will probably not be a destabilizing arms race, but a deep collision of ways of living with others. Ya wanna talk destabilizing, we may see a time when gunboat psychology will no longer cut the mustard, and may even gut the mustered. Asusual,m GW is dancing a mad rendition of ther last war, unable to conceive of how the next one is unfolding.

A

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: Greg F.
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 06:02 PM

Shrub & the Bushites could have saved a lot of time and bother
ringing in the Republican neo-imperialist American state
if they'd just read in the UN and to the press the Spanish "Requirement"
of the 15th Century, used in conquering and subjugating
the Carribean and South American native populations:

I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the name of the Pope take the King as Lord of this land and obey his mandates. If you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will enter powerfully against you all. I will subject you to the yoke and obedience to the Church and to His Majesty. I will take your women and children and make them slaves. The deaths and injuries you will receive from here on will be your own fault and not that of His Majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me.

With a few word substitutions for "Pope" and "His Majesty"
its remarkably contemporary. And depressingly so.

Best, Greg

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Peter T.
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 06:56 PM

16th century, actually, but I had forgotten how amazing it was -- especially as so few of those affected could understand Spanish -- they would read it out loud before subjugating a recalcitrant village.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 06:57 PM

Little Hawk: At dire risk of drifting the thread, but still quite seriously & with great respect & meaning no offense whatsoever---I have a question, for one who I intuit is well-qualified to answer. It is prompted by this, from you:

"...In the very long run, Nature will win...and those humans who are inclined to cooperate with Her...You see, a really intelligent civilization finds ways to serve both humanity and Nature (meaning animals, plants, earth, water, air, and all the rest of it)..."

The Question, which I've often pondered: why do we insist on drawing this invidious distinction---*any* distinction at all---between Nature on the one hand, and that small subset of Nature's animals whom we are pleased to call Humanity, on the other?

Put another way---& more provocatively, on purpose---why do we presume that our particular species, *including all of its works* both "good" & "bad" which arise inevitably from its own (pardon the expression) evolved nature, is something Other than, Apart from, indeed at War with---Nature? ("In the long run, Nature will win...") / & Yet *another* way still: Why does Nature consist *only* of the way things are, or would be, or might be, in mankind's absence?

I feel that I have never seen, done, walked upon, eaten, smoked, met, built, driven, flown across the ocean in, thought, imagined, been reincarnated as, nor otherwise experienced, anything unnatural. Because, I don't know how I *can*. I.e. - I don't know what it *means*. Or, if I vaguely know how people use the term, I don't know *why*.

But you do. You have wisdom here, I feel. Tell me. I am open. I am not being sarcastic, honestly.

To be sure, I *do* hope that homo so-called sapiens, with our (to my mind) all-natural products like the H-bomb and the global-warming emissions, does not destroy itself and the rest of Nature's life-forms on this little flyspeck piece of the universe. But I also hope the 2060 asteroid doesn't, either. Indeed I hope we can build an all-natural deflector machine to divert it. // I further hope that the sun doesn't run out of nuclear fuel and go nova and fry our descendants, if any; but on that one I think maybe the odds aren't so (pardon the expression) hot. In the long run, Nature will win. In the meantime, let us make the Best of our own.

Sincerely, The Pooka

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 07:12 PM

Woops. Left something out of my litany of Naturals above; and it ruins my case. Now I remember: I have *drunk* something unnatural. Murphy's Stout. / Nevermind.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 07:47 PM

while the naysayers here represent the majority opinion on the Mudcat, perhaps that is not true of the general population - may sayers meaning people who are against making war?

As they say "only in America" - outside America it seems pretty evident that is very much a majority position.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 08:00 PM

Hang on, Doug. My own intelligence network indicates that there will be peace marches aplenty in the very near future. Many of the older organizations are re-mobilizing and new ones are forming. Many Americans are really pissed at Bush's bellicose stance and are about to make their voices heard. Could make the Vietnam protests look downright mild.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: michaelr
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 08:12 PM

DougR -- there you go again, saying stuff like "Things are gonna be fine".

On what, exactly, do you base your cheerful optimism? Do you consider Bush to be a consummate statesman and tactician? Do you really believe that imposing "our" will on the world will not result in a shitstorm of repercussions? Or are you in an especially deeply entrenched (images of heads in sand come to mind) form of denial?

I'd really like to know.
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 08:13 PM

Pooka - Good post. I agree with you that humanity is itself simply a small part of "Nature". Clearly. The peculiar situation we have gotten ourselves into in Western civilization in the last couple of thousand years was to view ourselves as separate from Nature. This was delusional thinking, and it did indeed lead to a "War against Nature"...not just on an instinctive level, but on a proudly conscious one. The Christian religion is partly to blame for that, in that the Bible goes to great lengths to prove that Man is in dominion over Nature. Not the case. It's the other way around. Man is a small player contained within that which we call Nature, as are all his clever and sometimes very destructive devices.

The anti-religious (so they often saw themselves) forces which arose later in the industrial revoltion and the scientific revolution and the rise of rational humanism and atheism... all upped the ante in the War against Nature, mainly because they were focused on expanding the organized infrastructure, which has to do with money, manufactured weaponry, and manufactured goods of all kinds...and building the human mind and ego into the new "God"...or else just worshipping materialism itself.

If people had not been afraid of nature...and of each other...would they have constructed huge fortified cities, crowded places with stinking slums and sewage piled up on the streets? I doubt it. Who would want to live in such a place, if he felt safe and secure in a more "natural" setting?

That this is true is clearly demonstrated by the fact that rich people tend to purchase themselves pleasant hideaways with lots of green space and tranquility, and they do not choose to live in slums. I'm sure you can find some individual exceptions to that or anything else, but as a general rule it holds true.

Nature is both enticing (because of its rich resources) and disturbing because of its "lawlessness", so it must be subdued, conquered, put under ownerships, and exploited by the empire-building, industrially oriented mind. The poetic mystic, who is motivated by love of beauty itself, does not experience this conflict of interest, but loves Nature as it is.

But hell, I'm barely scratching the surface here. Books containing hundreds of thousands of words have been written about it.

I'm sure Amos has some good ideas on the subject...

Let me see what I think is natural...

It's natural to take as much of something as you actually need at any give time. It's rather unnatural to take 5 times that much, specially while somebody next to you starves. It happens because of an unrealistic fear of not having enough. This kind of fear NEVER accumulates enough of what it thinks it needs to feel safe.

It's natural and healthy to fear a real threat. It's counterproductive to constantly fear a threat which is unreal....or perhaps theoretically real, but still may never happen.

It's natural to love in a spontaneous and giving way. It's unnatural to love in a way that is destructive toward the beloved and the self, but that is what the majority of people do much of the time, because they love from a position of Fear...fear of loss and fear of not having enough.

Animals sometimes demonstrate that sort of destructive behaviour when they are caged or isolated or subjected to extraordinary stress. What does that say about our human situation? Natural? Well, it's occuring IN the greater field of Nature, but it's not what I would call natural.

What is natural is...anything acting in a manner that suits its original proper function and leads somewhere in keeping with its original purpose.

What is unnatural is the reverse of that.

Now you have to decide what your "original purpose" is, of course...

My original purposes were:

1. to sustain my existence by breathing, eating, drinking, and excercising

2. to discover every new thing about my existence that I could

3. to explore it and test my abilities and discover my limits by so doing.

4. to love. (the more I could love, the greater the possibility of expansion of what I was meant to be and had a desire to be)

Those got overlaid in short order with things like:

1.Fear of abandonment (happens the minute you separate a baby from his mother...in an unnatural way...and that virtually NEVER happens with animals in Nature, but happens all over the place with people

2. Fear of not being acceptable to various other people who had bought into all kinds of nonsensical ideas which they were eager for me to adopt so I could "fit in".

3. Fear of other people's tendency toward competition and cruelty

4. Fear of my own natural impulses (like normal sexual reactions, for example)

5. Fear of poverty (unknown in Nature)

6. Fear of the police and the law (unknown in Nature)

7. Fear of not having enough "time" (the tyrrany of the clock). Unknown in Nature.

8. Fear of aging and eventual death. Unknown in Nature. Animals deal with NOW, not with what might be in 20 years from now...

9. Fear of the Bomb

and so on....

Now, you may think all of that is "natural". I don't.

I think the split between natural and unnatural behaviour occured a very long time ago, when the human being first decided this: that he was irrevocably separate from all he saw around him...and that he was somehow different from it and superior to it! It was a short step from that to perceiving it as not his relative/home/refuge, but his ENEMY...or his victim. Both the traditional religions AND the industrial and rational movements have added to that type of thinking.

You say everything is a part of Nature. So do I. But how can a being who himself regards Nature as the "other" behave as a part of Nature? He can't. He doesn't want to.

Just like...how can a man and woman truly unite if they can't each see that they ARE the other? If they believe they are irrevocably separate, then they will experience that separation over and over again, and they will never be one, except in a fleeting moment. They'll just engage in combat and compromise and maneuver and more combat, in pursuit of what they imagine they "need"...when actually they were complete in the first place, just as is everything else. Complete beings can truly love. Partial beings can't. That's my opinion. They can desire, covet, and grasp, but they can't love. They might glimpse it in an unguarded moment, and that's what is called a moment of "grace".

If I ever become a complete being, I'll try to remember and let you know...I may have indentified the illness, but I have not yet found the cure.

Kat - Damned if I know what you should do. You're different from me, most likely. What I do is practice non-violence, avoid most advertising, read books instead of watching TV, live a pretty simple material lifestyle for the most part, and refuse to vote for any political party I don't have real confidence in. Well, that's some of what I do. What you choose to do to change society is your business, not mine.

I'm more oriented toward changing my own inner self than changing the world outside me. When I change, I find that it changes...in a most mysterious way.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Peter T.
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 08:33 PM

I wonder if the Mudcat gremlins who just added BS to this thread title thought I wasn't serious! (just so no one reading this thinks it was I who entitled it thusly).

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 08:48 PM

Little Hawk: Wow.

You said "Pooka - good post." LH, *superlative* reply. Thank you, sir. Having read you before, I expected a lot. I got more. I have re-read yours a couple times, & will study it futher. Wisdom indeed. I'm most grateful.

While intellectually I claim that my computer screen is as natural as the untamed vegetation in my back yard (you should hear the neighbors, oy), still I sometimes do wistfully repair to W.B.Yeats, to wit [from memory, please forgive errors]:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made,
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings,
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always, night and day,
I hear lake water lapping with low sound by the shore;
As I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement grey,
I hear it, in the deep heart's core.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: DougR
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 08:54 PM

Michael: you mean because I am not joining the majority posting to this thread in hanging crepe? Spreading gloom and doom all over the place?

Yes, I do believe GW is an "excellent statesman and tacticion." If U. N. forces attack Iraq it will be because there will be a strong coalition between the U. S. and our friends (many of them fair weather admittedly) but I do not believe the U. S. will go in unilaterily, and I do think Bush will be able to put the coalition together. That, in the face of so much criticism from abroad, is statesmanship. Among those who will comprise the coaltion, I believe, will be Russia, Great Britain, perhaps even Germany and France (kicking and screaming). I also believe the Arab states will provide bases from which U. N. forces will operate. These will include Saudia Arabia and Kuwait.

I don't think Saddam will agree to the more stringent rules of enforcement in the new U. N. Resolution (they have already refused it seems), and I do think Iraq will be invaded.

That does not mean I like war. It just means that sometimes war is the only way to correct a bad situation.

I predicted in these posts months ago that that would be the final outcome between the Israelis and the Palestinians and it appears that is what is coming down. Israel will be able to dictate the terms of peace, because they will have defeated the Palestinians.

Saddam will not give up his weapons of mass destruction just because we ask him to. Anyone that belives that is delusional, I think. It will take a war to destroy them. I'm sorry, but I think that is the way this is going to come down.

Clear enough Michael?

Don: right on! March away, I hope those who believe that marching accomplishes something does it with vigor.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 08:57 PM

Doug: Don is right. There is some mobilizing that is going on as you sit there in front of your putter 24/7 ready to defend Junior's every screw up.

There's gonna be a March in DC in October. I'l get the date for ya' in case you wanta come down to heckle the anit-war folks. Heck, I'd hate for you to miss out on that opportunity.

Kat: I know you can find this but there are 17 House memmebrs who are holding down the fort against Junior's plans to take over the World. You asked what tyou could do. Find "em and post 'em and those of us who want to can send 'em emails of support... or other, Doug.

Yeah, hey, it ain't exactly gonna stop Junior but at least it's gonna make him know that not everyone is goosestepping yet.

Resist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 09:30 PM

Thnak you, Bobert and JenEllen.

LH, I didn't mean in a personal way. I had meant things that could be done in a concerted effort, not individual things, which I already do plenty of and have for years, as JenEllen suggested. It seems more efficacious is we match our words with action. And, I certainly wouldn't want you telling me what exactly I should be doing, of course only I can know that. Being a little facetious there, aren't you?:-)

Bobert, I'll be back, but will probably post them to a different thread. Thanks,

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 10:45 PM

That coalition you talk of Doug, if it happened, would be made up of governments riding roughshod over the wishes of the majority of their people, in deference to the dictates of the Maninthe White House, who has indicated that his patience is exhausted.

It's all working out the way the people planning Sepotember 11 must have dreamed it might.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:02 PM

If I ever become a complete being, I'll try to remember and let you know...I may have indentified the illness, but I have not yet found the cure.

LH:

Every division which you perceive which makes you feel incomplete is separated by your own walls.

When you can wholly own those, wholeness comes a lot closer.

As regards the strange mix of psychoses that are fulminating between Bushovisch and Saddamsky, the sad truth is that tthey are both pretty near madmen.

Anyone here seen hard facts about the nuclear capability threat in Iraq, the one that one says is there and the other says ain't?
Anyone measured the goddamn rems?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Amergin
Date: 22 Sep 02 - 11:28 PM

well...I just know that that fellow in the white house scares the shit out of me...almost makes one want to pack up and leave...

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 12:19 AM

Thank you all for this interesting and most informative thread. I realy appreciate this. The answers, poems, rebuts, agreements and insights seem pointless due to the preponderance of evidence... I've gotten a real kick out of you Bobert! I only have one request beyond that of keep it up... and that would be... that the folks you should reach will be exactly the ones that will be put off by your generous offerings of frequent typos... Your points are sharp and ought to be well taken... ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 02:01 PM

Where's Joan Baez when we need her??

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 02:26 PM

ttr: Well, thanks for your kind words. I will again confess to being severely dexlexic which differs from laziness or poorly eductated. I do try to proof read my posts, however, when I look at a word, its looks right to me. Now mix in some poor typing skills and, as Paul Harvey say, you have the rest of the story.

*But*, I am going to try, with the help of my 17 year old son, to figure out the spell check thing.

Man, how did I get through college, I ask. Hey, it was the 60's so I can honestly say that I don't have a clue.

But, ttr, I *will* do better and if you see me backsliding, feel free to PM and jump on me.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 02:38 PM

Here's a good spell-checker for free, for anyone who uses Internet Explorer - Hot Lingo (Min dyo still have to read through carefully, because - for example if you type "not" instead of now or carp instead of crap and so forth, it'll let them through.

And at over 100 posts this thread is way too long now. Of course anyone who starts a Part 2 somebody is bound to be accused me of being a nay-sayer or a Yank-hater or something...

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 02:39 PM

Bobert:

A simple solution is to type your posts in MS Word before posting. It highlights words it doesn't recognize an you can check to see if they are what you meant. THen you can copy and paste them into the threads when you're satisfied.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 03:25 PM

All good suggestions. Nevertheless, let us remember that "What a man says is far more important than the way he says it." (From I, Claudius by Robert Graves.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 03:42 PM

Don't worry about it, Bobert. In the new Mudcat which Max is putting on this week, you will be able to preview a post. I like the challange fo reading unusual postings, anyway. Keeps me on my toes.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: DougR
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 07:18 PM

Bobert: why would I heckle folks who are exercising their freedom of expression? That wouldn't make much sense. March away, I say! I think the debates that are going on about Bush's handling of the Iraqi situation are healthy exercises and are good for the country.

And I think you folks should stop picking on Bobert. We all make typos from time to time. I always thought he was so committed to his subjects his fingers might be racing his thought process and the fingers were winning. :>)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 07:44 PM

Dougie: Come on over here and get a hug, Big Guy.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 08:02 PM

O.K. so I reviewed some of my recent posts and well... wow!... I am prone to dexlexia too, and probably more than the ever intence and PC Bobert. More power to you Bobert!

So has anyone scaned the election in Germany? Seems a comparison was made involving our Bush and their Hitler, and it caused the election to flip to the liberals... Uncanny isn't it? Fact is often stranger than fiction...ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 08:05 PM

Amos - That's true...

Where's Joan Baez? someone asked...

Well, I think she's still out there saying her piece and singing for people, but that doesn't mean you're likely to see her on the TV, does it? The main marketing systems simply ignore what they cannot co-opt or control, let alone comprehend...

Now, heres....Britney! With her thoughts on the War Against Terrorism, Chapter II - Showdown In Iraq!!!

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 08:29 PM

Well, thankie, ttr. Mightie kind of ye, sir. Ahhhh, is it my imagination or is this thread gettin kinda, well... long?

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 08:35 PM

Well here's the thing, guys.

I have no truck with doomsayers, and the Empire is Falling Focie Loxie stuff.

But I have to say I was raised in the belif that we really stood for some kind of brave and virtuous breakthrough in human relations. And I also learned that one of the most horrible things an individual can do is to ruin the life of another human being.

Now all I have seen in the information allowed me does not convince me that there are good reasons to ruin the lives of tens, hundreds or thousands of human beings on the strength of what Bush says is a fact, or even what the good Mister Rumsfeld claims the whole world knows.

I have said over and over again that if there are hard facts supporting this claim of barbaric munitions, those hard facts should be communicated.

In the absence of that we are careening toward the greatest shame we've ever supported--premptive ruination of others based on rumors. Now THAT is barbaric, stupid, Neanderthal, antediluvian and minicephalic int he extreme, not to mention bad for public relations far and wide, and downright shameful to boot.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it uinless someone coughs up hard evidence otherwise.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 08:47 PM

This is normally the point where I would jump in and start a part II because of the length of the thread.

But I ain't a-gonna do it this time. Nohow.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: The Pooka
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 09:03 PM

Thomas the Rhymer - yeah, remarkable German election. Come-from-behind win, very very narrow, by Schroeder's (sp?) incumbent center-left coalition---contrary to recent rightward drift throughout Europe. / However: the guy who allegedly (he denies it) analogized Bush to Hitler, has been cordially required by his political ally Schroeder to resign.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 09:16 PM

Well, Amos, tell us how ya' really feel... Just funnin' though this is no funnin' matter. I knew they didn't have the goods or they would have eagerly shared 'em. And that's a fact.

Okay, now Junior huff-n-puff act has thrown an election in Germany where the liberal party has held power by tellin' Junior to stuff his little war.

Speaking of which, I heard a few Generals in the Congressional hearings today and they didn't seem to have a clue what it would take to win the war. Not a clue.

Senator A to General X, "Well how many men will it take?"

General X: "I donno..."

Senator B to General Y, "well, General, how will it be fought?"

General Y; "I donno..."

Senator C to General Z, "Well, General, will it come down to taking Bagdad block at a time?"

General Z; "I donno..."

Hmmmmmmmm? And we're going to war on a guess that Saddam is about to attack us? Is that right? Ahhhhh, with what? Oh yeah, the suit case duct taped to a SCUD with a range of 500 miles... (Danged, Bobert. You're going to *have* to keep up here...)

Hmmmmmmmm? We're going to go to war on guessed motives with guessed plans. Is that it? What am I missing here?

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 10:43 PM

I suppose Saddam did not really murder Kurds with nervegas? Now what in the world would the Iraqis need nervegas for? What was that invasion of Kuwait all about, perhaps he would have let Saudi Arabia off?

oh pulllease Mr Saddam don't kill my family cause I knock my country where we have free speech and lots of other silly billy stuffs. I want to be yoh homey and we will all live happily ever after ...

NOT

Hey G W ...hurry up!

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: GUEST,Lyle
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 10:53 PM

Maybe it is because I've been around for so many years, but as I see it:

All of you have pretty strong feelings. In each opinion, there is at least some merit.

Now - How many of you have a minimum of 10 million dollars (US) to donate to a political party???

None? Well, hell, then you might as well shut up, cuz what you think won't make one bit of difference.

Lyle

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 11:10 PM

Lyle: Where as the realist in me agrees with ya, the romantic-all-things-possible optomist in me goes the other way. I saw what we were able to accomplics with taking it to the streets during the Vietanm War, even though it can be argued that we didn't end the war by even one day, I think we did have an impact. And so that's what I'm going on here.

But your point is well taken as the governemnt is owned by those who control the dough. No arguement...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Sep 02 - 11:52 PM

Bobert - I'm sure those generals have some very good notions of exactly how to kill a hundred thousand or even five hundred thousand Iraquis...at the cost of 5 or 10 American lives...and how to blast the living shit out of every piece of strategic infrastructure in Iraq at the same time. Piece of cake.

They are not saying how they would do it because...that would not be militarily wise, would it? I wouldn't say it either if I was them. (Nor would I do it, but that's another matter altogether...)

sorefingers - those who wish for others to be at ground zero may find cause to regret it when the shoe is on the other foot, correct? So be careful what you wish for. The average Iraqui is not responsible for your state of insecurity, but it is the average Iraqui who will be killed while you rejoice and call it "victory". Someone else who thinks like you do will strike back at equally innocent average Americans...just like you...and he will rejoice and call it "victory". I call it tragedy...in either case.

Lyle - Dead right.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 12:12 AM

It is good to see good people with clear conscience speak as freely as you do. Yes one day despite our nation's imperialist tendancies may bring democracy to the far flung lands of medeval nations and, if lucky, perhaps florida.

Imperialism was America's "manifest destiny" , it was our Louisiana Purchase, it was our Indian and Mexican wars, it was Seward's folly. Our expansion has come in honorable and vile means with honest dollars, blood and paid bounties on the decapitated heads of Mexican children in California, the small pox tainted blankets we gave the Indians and a decisive victory in WWII.

We reluctantly were a temporary imperialist occupation army while the great healing of nations began. With a percieved threat of Stalinist imperialism and atomic enemy the prophesy of Eisenhower came true. The Military Industrial Complex controls the oil, the use of our armies, the ecomomy of industry, the propoganda of monopolized media and weapons of civil control that many of us find hard to believe.

I have marched on Washington regarding an unjust war. I have slept in jails crowded with jubilant protesters. I awakened in jails to the smell of mariquana with no retribution by the police. If one had escaped the clubs on the street the jails were a santuary of just and caring people, protesters and guards alike. A country is seen honestly in their prisons. Today the jails in Washington DC are not much changed for protestors but our prisons now hold millions that per capita outnumbers any other nation on Earth. The prisons today represent the deliberate racist and economic policies that are not just a legacy of slavery but a decision by this nation as a whole.

The education and war president GW Bush is no Lincoln. He is not even a late General Polk. Bush is defined by his Texas prison policies. If I in my limited vison see a punk, a thug, an inarticulate draconian simpleton so does the rest of the world. Any attempt to see the greater good that America is, in its people and higher dreams is ground in the dirt by this man of lowest intellectual common denominator. I write of this man as a symbol and have no personal animus to the man.

This great country has survived the do nothing, know nothing and reckless leaders of the past and may do so again. Just one thing...The weapons and stakes are higher than in the past.

The optimism the past may inspire may be drawing even odds with an evil that could trample the constitutional rights of our citizens and grant imperial rights to a man/philosophical greed that I truly believe has a sick sense of the greater good.

Even the much loved El Duche did not escape the broken hearts of the mob. I hope this man and the industry and greedy philosophy that props him up does not break America's heart.

Anger has run amok in the streets of this country in my lifetime. The federal contingency plans for potential angry riots has new and extremely powerful weapons to quell unrest. The clouds that dissent is treason is starting to clear after 9-11. As long as non lethal responses to dissent in this country is respected there is a living promise of what American Liberty is about in times of celebration, fear, confusion or anger.

I pledge alligience to America, a country for all seasons, for all people, for all time.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: Amos
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 12:16 AM

Donuel, you say the nicest things...

A helluva closing statement! Second the motion.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 12:34 AM

Phew! Well said, Donuel!

Anyone ever wondered how it would be feasible to require people to get out and vote? I know it goes against being democratic but I just was thinking that it is so fucked up that so many will complain and say they have no real say when there is always a good sized percentage who won't even bother to vote and I wondered if we could make it mandatory, in a POSITIVE way, like when we all went to get a polio vaccine on sugar cubes or something like that. *Hope I am making some sense.* Please notice I Am NOT advocating this, juts wondering about the concept.

Maybe have to have proof that one voted last time before one can register a car, start college, get a driver's license, with exceptions, of course. I dunno, just thoughts.....

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: NicoleC
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 12:51 AM

Kat, I think the same thing, sorta. Except that I don't think voting should be *mandatory* -- if they don't care enough to vote I don't want 'em poking whichever holes or pulling whichever levers just so they can leave.

But knowing HOW to vote should be required. We require immigrants to take a citizenship test before they can earn the right to vote; why do we assume that if you were born here, you know these things? They may teach it in school, but if you can graduate without knowing how to read, it'll be a long time before understanding the framework of the Constitution is required.

I'm all for a citizenship test to vote. NO exceptions. Pop quiz, answer two out of 3 current events questions right on the computer before it spits out your ballot? Local events for local elections, state events for state elections, etc. Or a test you have to take periodically, like a driver's test?

Only thing is, I don't see how to make it fair and non-discriminatory. Unscrupulous election officials would turn it to their advantage if they could figure out a way.

*sigh*

Subject: RE: BS: Obit: America
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Sep 02 - 07:16 AM

Post number 125 - this is a silly length for a thread without a break. Here is Part 2